Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s (HPE) pending $14 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks received a European Commission (EC) thumbs-up, which helped to counter a continued slowdown in Juniper’s operations as it works through the expected year-long acquisition process.

The EC provided unconditional approval of the pending deal, needing just over a month to conclude the purchase “would raise no competition concerns in the European Economic Area.” This included investigations in the impact the deal could have on the supply of wireless LAN (WLAN) equipment, supply of wireless access points, the supply of Ethernet campus switches, and supply of data center switches.

The deal still awaits approval from other regions, most specifically from the United Kingdom and the United States.

The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) began its investigation into the deal on June 19, and currently has an Aug. 14 deadline for an initial decision.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) is also reportedly working through its investigation into the deal. HPE and Juniper investors have already signed off on the deal.

HPE CEO Antonio Neri has also stated that he does not think the deal will require approval from China’s regulators due to Juniper’s limited operations in that country.

The regulatory approvals are significant for Juniper as analysts have highlighted the global presence of the vendor’s enterprise wired and WLAN products and services.

“Juniper’s client base is globally diverse, with particular focus on the general enterprise market, as well as retail, education, government, and health care,” Gartner noted in ranking Juniper as a “leader” in the market. “The company continues to invest in integrated AI and ML [machine learning] operations, as well as cloud-based security capabilities. Gartner expects that Juniper will invest in genAI integration for enhanced capabilities in its natural language processing interface.”

HPE announced the Juniper deal early this year, with Neri noting that Juniper will allow HPE to boost its network focus and also take advantage of HPE’s GreenLake as-a-service model to be a more formidable opponent for market heavyweight Cisco.

Juniper finances continue to sink HPE’s regulatory win comes as Juniper continues to struggle.

Juniper reported a 17% drop in revenues during the second quarter of this year compared to last year. That drop was fully on the back of equipment sales, with Juniper’s service revenues posting a year-over-year gain.

Juniper was able to trim expenses enough and benefit from some past investments to grow net income nearly 40% during the quarter. However, revenues and net income for the first six months of the year were down significantly compared to the first half of 2023.

Juniper CEO Rami Rahim in a statement spun the numbers positively, pointing to ongoing demand for the vendor’s artificial intelligence (AI)-powered products.

“We experienced better than expected demand during the June quarter, with orders growing double-digits sequentially and year-over-year,” Rahim wrote. “We saw particularly robust orders from our cloud customers, many of which have digested prior purchases and are investing to support AI initiatives. We also experienced better than expected enterprise demand due to continued momentum in our Mist-led campus and branch business and strong demand for our enterprise data center offerings.”

Rahim had previously noted that macroeconomic and customer purchasing challenges were offsetting robust growth from its Mist business.

“While many of our customers continue to be impacted by macro headwinds and the digestion of previously placed orders, we are starting to see a recovery in demand from our cloud customers and saw another quarter of double-digit order growth in our Mist-led business,” Rahim wrote in connection to the vendor’s Q1 results. “I remain optimistic regarding our long-term growth prospects, particularly as customers adopt our AI offerings, both for network operations and data center use cases.”

Juniper has stopped conducting quarterly earnings calls due to the pending HPE deal, which is still expected to close by early next year.

HPE’s management remains unconcerned, with Neri telling investor’s during the company’s earnings call earlier this year that “we have not lost one single deal that I can point to, neither because of the slowdown or customers deferring, not because of the announcement of the acquisition of Juniper.”